Stopping in Staunton

Sitting in Newtown Bakery having the perfect moment:

On my plate is a flaky croissant, filled with tomatoes, eggs, purple onion, and feta. Bouncy jazz accompanies a view of the intersection: on the right, an old blue house with white shutters and a stone foundation, on the left, a sunny graveyard, green grass with grey stone. 

Pulling the croissant apart, it crackles like the fires in the wood stove back home, the savory notes wafting towards me on a breath of warm air. First comes the taste the protein of the egg, then the cool juice of the tomato (which heats at a different tempo than the surrounding phyllo) and the purple onion pops up at the end, the third instrument playing in this morning symphony. 

In the past I've skimmed through moments like this one...so focused on the destination that the present was never fully in focus. Well now, in this 'inbetween' moment, I am seeing it.

I can tell this is a place loved by its town, with many regulars. While I'm here, parents have brought in their children to buy bread for the week and - oh, what's that, a cinnamon roll? Well while we're here... A few older folks with more leisure time have come to read newspapers, sitting on the terrace tables outside with tea or coffee... I've heard conversations between the bakers and their friends who come in, bits and pieces of a hometown I don't truly exist in.

"How's the baby?"

"Mornin! How you doin?"

"greasy food with greasy dudes"

In addition to my breakfast, I also bought a Linzer tart and a freshly made ciabatta loaf, to carry with me back to NC. 

So this is what it's like to be a morning person. 

06/30/16 - Journal Entry

wednesday

sweet potato, forgotten

oven at 350 degrees

five hours pass

sweet potato, remembered

not burned

the heat of the oven made it sweeter

softer, and i had the suspicion that,

if left for an indeterminate amount of time

each hour it would sink further into

this caramelized state

of infinite possibility 

now:

When I drive I am navigating through memories of my mother. I sit where she sat, feel the urge to ask the questions she asked, am reminded that my haircut now is what hers was then.

   Unless I am giving someone a ride that day, any questions I ask are left to float around the spacious interior of a vehicle moving at 70 mph. Images flash through my mind as trees flash by the windows - long Loblolly pine trees, vertical lines ticking by as I travel backwards. 

   The day she picked me up in the white Volkswagon to go blackberry picking, wearing her work-gifted varsity style jacket that I wear now. The day she drove me to school in the white Toyota and walked me to class though it made her late to work. The day she drove me home from my failed driver's exam, talking me through my despair at 55 mph.

   When I drive I feel like my mother and I have become one person. I've yet to decide if that is unnerving or comforting. When I drive, I have the urge to ask myself,       "How was your day?"

strong hands that make delicate things

Every once in awhile, in the midst of living, my hands catch my eye. 

Their busyness, their stillness, sometimes simultaneous effects,

as when I'm caught in thought,

as when I press a temporary tattoo against my skin,

as when one hand holds the other.

At times they remind me of my mother's, and the veins that rise out of my skin are mountains of __________. rivers of __________.

In other moments, my hands remind me of an old lover's,

in the shape,

in the way they fold,

in the empty space between my fingertips. 

I think perhaps my hands are better at holding the past than the present. 

morning breakfast

An egg rests in the palm of my hand, creamy nut-brown shell smooth and cool against my skin, farm fresh from the fridge. The curve of my palm must have been made with this egg in mind, so perfectly do the two meet in their oblong love affair, held in quick kitchen trysts between whisk and frying pan. The shell gives the illusion of stability but we both know it is temporary and, by the sheer nature of its eggness, it is already weighted with the promise of a meal - perfectly poached and roped into the family business of breakfast. 

Cradling the egg, I feel I am cradling the universe. I crack it open. Is this reckless? Do universes come in packs of "1 doz"?

The inside of the egg has never seen the world until now, in my kitchen at 8:13 a.m. on Thursday. Monumental in its newness, yet mundane it its regularity, the cracked egg reminds me of those moments of realization I had as a child, when the thin shell of fantasy had just cracked and a richer, starker light began pouring in. 

                                                               

Perhaps I am inside an infinity of nesting eggs, and to reach the outermost shell would be to see the truth of things...